Curious about the name? It comes from our formula for effective design leadership:

Experimentation

Prototypes

+

Proven Methodologies

Process

+

Creative Exploration

Play

Meet Our Awesome Sponsors

These great sponsors help us make Prototypes, Process & Play affordable and accessible. These organizations see the value in design and design leadership—please show your support for the support they’ve shown us!

Program
&
Schedule

Hone your design leadership skills over two days with us at Columbia College Chicago. A carefully curated single-track approach ensures that you can attend every session and have a truly shared experience with other attendees and speakers.

About Our Speakers

Great thinking on design leadership is found in many forms in many industries. We’ve curated an incredible lineup of design experts, mentors, and coaches from diverse fields to help you down your own leadership path. Our single-track format ensures you’ll get to learn from every one of them.

Keynotes

Jared Spool

Founder, User Interface Engineering, & Co-founder, Centre Center

Jared Spool is the founder of User Interface Engineering (UIE), the largest usability research organization of its kind in the world. If you’ve ever seen Jared speak about usability, you know that he’s probably the most effective and knowledgeable communicator on the subject today. He’s been working in the field of usability and design since 1978, before the term “usability” was ever associated with computers.

Design is a Team Sport

Every seasoned designer has fallen into the trap. They see the bad design in front of them. They can’t help but see how bad it is. And they want to redesign it. Show the world how it could be done. How it should be done.

Well-intentioned as the desire to rid the world of this bad design is, their approach often is a disaster. It pushes their allies away, accidentally giving off the air of superiority filled with the smells of arrogance and contempt.

An alternative is a well-designed process for creating your designs. The secret sauce in that well-designed process is a realization and inclusiveness of everyone on the team. It’s infused with an understanding of how people contribute to the design process, even when they aren’t trained in design skills. And it opens up opportunities to give everyone—not just your trained designers—the superpowers necessary to rid your products and services of bad design.

This talk will inspire you and your team to:

Realize the reason everyone thinks they are a designer is they are a designer, however unskilled

Learn that our design processes need to be designed, with intention and thoughtfulness

Focus on helping every contributing influencer of your designs become a consciously competent designer themselves

Jay Newton-Small

Co-Founder, MemoryWell

Jay Newton-Small is cofounder of MemoryWell, which tells the life stories of those suffering from Alzheimer’s and dementia.

Previously, Newton-Small was Washington correspondent for TIME Magazine, where she remains a contributor. At TIME she covered politics as well as stories on five continents from conflicts in the Middle East to the earthquake in Haiti and the November 2015 Paris terror attacks. She has written more than half a dozen TIME cover stories and interviewed numerous heads of state, including Presidents Barack Obama and George W. Bush.

She authored the 2016 best selling book, Broad Influence: How Women Are Changing the Way America Works.

Before TIME, Newton-Small was a reporter for Bloomberg News, where she covered the White House and politics.

Newton-Small received an M.S. in journalism from Columbia University and undergraduate degrees in International Relations and Art History from Tufts University. She was a 2015 Harvard Institute of Politics fellow and is a 2016 New America fellow. She is the 2016 winner of the prestigious Dirksen Award for congressional reporting and the 2016 Deadline Club award for community service reporting.

Broad Influence – How Women are Changing the Way America Works

Executive office has proven the hardest glass ceiling to break. Less than 5% of Fortune 1000 CEOs are women, just 18% of America’s mayors, 12% of governors and, of course, zero presidents. There’s a huge body of research that shows, whether it’s a legislature, a corporate board, a Navy ship, or an appellate court, when women reach between 20-30% of the leadership at any given organization it’s a tipping point and they begin to change how things are done – for the better. Jay shows where we’re reaching that tipping point – all three branches of the government – and the areas where we not – such as Silicon Valley and Wall Street, and why it’s important for us to get to critical mass across the board.

Mike Davidson

Recently: Vice President of Design, Twitter

MiMike most recently spent three years as Vice President of Design for Twitter. Prior to joining Twitter, Mike was Vice President at NBCNews.com, where he managed social news products and technologies. Earlier, he founded Newsvine, which was acquired by MSNBC, and spent several years as Art Director and Manager of Media Product Development for ESPN.com. Mike earned a B.A. in Business Administration from the University of Washington and studied Creative Advertising and Management at the University of Oxford.

Before the advent of web fonts, Mike invented and open-sourced sIFR, a technique which enabled thousands of individuals and organizations to use custom typography on the web.

Scott Berkun

Author & Speaker

Scott Berkun is a bestselling author and popular speaker on creativity, philosophy, culture, business and many other subjects. He’s the author of seven books, including The Myths of Innovation, Confessions of a Public Speaker, and The Year Without Pants. His work has appeared, or been mentioned, in The New York Times, The Washington Post, Forbes, The Wall Street Journal, The Economist, The Guardian, Wired magazine, USA Today, Fast Company, National Public Radio, The Huffington Post and other media. He studied philosophy, computer science and design at CMU, was a manager at Microsoft (’94-’03) and WordPress.com (’10-’12), and currently works full time as a writer and speaker.

The Dance of the Possible

You work with ideas, big and small, all day long–isn’t it time you learn the deep patterns that explain your successes and failures? This short and fun presentation, based on a new book will share timeless patterns and entertaining insights that can help you be more creative and productive all at the same time. From finding creative confidence to getting better feedback, you’ll be entertained as you’re challenged to think differently about thinking. Bring your toughest questions and situations and get useful and entertaining advice during this heavily interactive session.

Sessions

Carmen Medina

Heretic, Rebels at Work

Carmen, a retired Senior Federal Executive with 32 years’ experience in the Intelligence Community, is a recognized national and international expert on intelligence analysis, strategic thinking, diversity of thought, and innovation and intrapreneurs in the public sector. She is the co-author of the new book: Rebels At Work: A Handbook for Leading Change from Within and of the landmark Deloitte University Press paper on Diversity’s New Fronter: Diversity of Thought and the Future of the Workplace. Her story as a heretic and change agent at CIA is featured in Wharton School professor Adam Grant’s new bestseller Originals: How Non-Conformists Move the World.

From 2005-2007 Carmen was part of the executive team that led the CIA’s Analysis Directorate; in her last assignment before retiring she oversaw the CIA’s Lessons Learned program and led the Agency’s first effort to address the challenges posed by social networks, digital ubiquity, and the emerging culture of collaboration. She was a leader on diversity issues at the CIA, serving on equity boards at all organizational levels and across Directorates. She was the first CIA executive to conceptualize many IT applications now used by analysts, including online production, collaborative tools, and Intellipedia, a project she personally green-lighted; as a senior executive, she began using in 2005 social networking and blogs to reach her diverse workforce. Upon her retirement from CIA, she received the Distinguished Career Intelligence Medal. From 2011—2015, Carmen was a member of Deloitte Federal Consulting where she served as senior advisor and mentor to Deloitte’s flagship innovation program, GovLab.

Carmen describes herself as Puerto Rican by birth and Texan by nationality. She likes to garden and cook things that she has grown.

Lead Above Mediocre Thinking

When we engage in design thinking for our teams and projects, it’s easy to emphasize Design over the Thinking. Leaders know that we need to slow down to speed up; plan and think more to prevent rework and waste. Sometimes, we invest more in the work and the artifacts over finding the right ways to work together and create a shared understanding before moving toward a goal. Carmen Medina spent her entire career working with a diverse set of people and she had to find ways to create a shared space for collaboration–and she’ll show you how to focus on HOW teams work over WHAT the work is that’s being done.

All of this, regardless of whether or not you have a security clearance!

Dan Brown

Co-Founder, EightShapes

In 2006, Dan Brown co-founded EightShapes, a design firm based in Washington, DC. EightShapes designs digital products and systematizes design standards for Fortune 500 clients. Most recently, Dan has conducted user research for a higher education product, designed an application for architects seeking a license, and lead the design of a web-based consumer application for a major educational publishing company.

Dan’s two books, Communicating Design and Designing Together, deal with communications and collaboration on design teams, and are widely considered to be essential reading for UX designers. UX teams all over the world have played his game Surviving Design Projects, to improve their conflict management skills. His new book Practical Design Discovery deals with the very first phase of a project, in which the product team seeks to understand the design problem.

Curiosity, Skepticism, Humility: Achieving the Right Mindset for Design Discovery in Teams

Discovery, the first part of the design process, is crucial for aligning teams and leading them to design success. A well-aligned team works toward the same goal, and brings out the best in each other because they all understand what their trying to achieve.

Discovery can take many forms: a multi-month endeavor to prepare for a complex business application, or a four-day “sprint” to align the team around a vision for a new product. Whatever the form, however, teams are prepping and priming themselves to do detailed design and development work.

Discovery is complicated, chaotic, and messy. In discovery, teams gather information about the problem and then explore different ways to tackle it. Through critical thinking, they refine their understanding of the problem and zero-in on a concrete plan for execution. Discovery requires participants to shift attitudes and perspectives almost constantly. Team members go from “tell me more about” to “how about this idea” in the blink of an eye.

To pull this off successfully, team members need to embrace a discovery mindset. This attitude emphasizes learning. It relies on team members maintaining an open mind, questioning everything, and above all not taking themselves too seriously.

In this session, we’ll look at why this attitude is important, how it affects your team’s approach to discovery, and ways you can cultivate this mindset in yourself and those you lead.

Donna Lichaw

Author of The User's Journey

Donna Lichaw is the author of The User’s Journey: Storymapping Products That People Love. Through her writing, speaking, and much loved Storymapping Workshop, Donna guides startups, non-profits, and global brands in optimizing their digital products and services by providing them with a simplified way to drive user engagement. Utilizing her ‘story first’ approach, she helps organizations define and refine their value proposition, transform their thinking, and better engage with their core customers. Prior to her career in technology, she refined her talent for storytelling and narrative development as an award-winning documentary filmmaker.

Leading With Story

Getting others to listen to you is hard. Whether those people are your team members, peers across your organization, the c-suite, or a board up above, you need to inspire them and move them to action to be most effective at your job.

Storytelling is one of the most powerful ways you can get people to listen to you and to move them to action. But in a business context, the stories that you tell are only as effective as the stories that you build… and get others to build with you. We’ll look at how story drives some of the most successful product and service–driven organizations out there. Learn how story sparks systemic design thinking, collaboration, and innovation that enables you to more effectively build successful products and services that people get excited to work on… and use.

Eli Silva

Sr. Product Designer, Pivotal Labs

Eli Silva is a Sr. Product designer at Pivotal labs. Eli is best known as a diversity advocate with practical insights drawn from the design discipline. Unlike traditional approaches to org design that focus on charts and work distribution, Eli emphasizes studying the way people interact with an organization as a product. Using this as a tool for reflection leads to better interactions between people and their work cultures. In re-examining Design Thinking as a organizational design tool, with a focus on diversity and inclusion, their work has generated some powerful new ways of looking at old questions in a new light. Eli enjoys playing video games, blogging, and volunteering on the side.

Designing for Diversity in Organization Design

The lack of diversity in design organizations is a fact that we can design for. We can drive innovation and increase creativity, but we have to be honest about what’s holding us back. Eli Silva will outline ways to design cultures that support design thinking, organizational growth, and diversity in the workplace.

Great design is the result of hard work and cultures that foster empathy, creativity, listening, and honest conversations. These happen to be the groundwork for diversity, so why is diversity still such a challenge in technology and in design organizations in particular?

In this talk you will learn practical steps toward designing for diversity—including quick tips on how to audit your processes and practices today. Learn how to effectively consider minorities and underrepresented groups in your approach to hiring, everyday work, and leadership development. The result of diverse design organizations is products that increasingly reflect actual people, across the age, gender, and income spectrum. That’s something worth working for.

Lisa Welchman​

Author, Managing Chaos: Digital Governance by Design

For the past two decades, the leaders of global 1000 companies, NGOs, and other organizations have turned to Lisa to analyze and solve their digital governance challenges. Lisa also speaks globally on issues related to digital governance, the rise of the Information Age, and diversity in the digital technology sector. Lisa is the author of Managing Chaos: Digital Governance by Design published by Rosenfeld Media in 2015.

Governing with Intention

Our digital future is upon us, and we already need more mature approaches toward governing digital channels. We need to be clear about the roles and responsibilities of those who conceive of–and deliver–that which is being consumed online. We also need to be intentional about what is being built; and our design teams will need to be organized to meet the goals of our users. Lisa will focus on the decision-making aspect of digital governance and how organizations and groups can better organize teams to work efficiently, ethically, and creatively.

The first 20 years of digital have focused on growth, technology building, and finding new ways to exploit the capacity of digital. Hopefully, the next 20 will be the beginning of a maturity process where individuals, organizations, and governments will not only continue the expansion of digital, but also thinking more comprehensively about the impact of what is built and delivered.

Matthew Milan

CEO, Normative

Matthew is a complex systems specialist with a focus on software innovation. He has degrees in Ski Area Management, Geographic Information Systems and Environmental Planning, and has spent most of his career helping organizations make concrete decisions about the future through the integration of strategic design and technology prototyping.

Matthew has spent the last decade at Normative leading teams on the fuzzy front end of emerging technologies. Along the way he’s discovered that when you work at the intersection of people and technology, change is the only constant. Dealing with ambiguity is what gets him up in the morning.

Matthew married with three children under 10 years old. They ski a lot.

Making Moonshots

A critical part of leadership is the reduction of ambiguity for your team. Your job is to make it clear, so the team can work towards the goals you’ve set. The reality is that many of the goals you’re setting are make-or-break for the future of your organization. If you work in a field like design or innovation, you’re probably already sick of hearing the word “moonshot.” Maybe you’ve even been part of one, or more likely, you’ve unwittingly part of many. As a leader, moonshots are part of the job.

There’s just one problem with the “moonshot” approach: the real moonshot wasn’t a single giant leap forward. It was a series of incremental experiments designed to test the riskiest parts of going to the moon, as soon as possible. This approach put humans on the moon within a decade of Kennedy’s famous speech, and it’s the same approach that the best innovators like Elon Musk use to get rapid traction on the hardest and most complex problems of our times.

This session will demystify complex, challenging “moonshot” initiatives and give you a set of principles and practices that you can use to wrestle the riskiest innovation challenges to the ground. You’ve already got the tools: research, prototyping, planning and production. Now, let’s help you to connect them together with the right questions and perspectives, getting the traction you need make innovation work practical and successful.

Sofia Millares

Creative Director of Product Design, Nasdaq

Sofia Millares is the Creative Director of Product Design at Nasdaq. For the past four years she has been overseeing the styling and global functionality for the entire product suite offering. Alongside her team, she is determined to expand the Nasdaq branding throughout all platforms and create new ways to position and rethink these products.

Born and raised in Mexico, Sofia always had an interest in design and moved to New York City ten years ago to pursue a BA in Design and Management with a concentration in graphic design from Parsons the New School for Design. In addition to design, she loves to travel, practice calligraphy and hang out with her three-year-old (and 100lb.) pup Lemmy.

Tami Evnin

Lead Product Designer, Nasdaq

Tami Evnin is the Director of Portfolio Design Strategy at Nasdaq, where her team is changing the way a fintech leader builds products. She has established design best practices and helped scale the team from 3 to over 25 designers. Her most recent challenge has been learning to manage former peers while trying to not let her creative muscles atrophy. Tami earned her MFA in Design and Technology at Parsons The New School for Design, where she focused on developing social interfaces to foster interdisciplinary collaboration and product development. She is an international award winning product designer, has recently presented at a handful of international conferences, and is a proponent of the Oxford comma.

Sofia & Tami present:

World’s Best Boss: Lessons Learned from a New Design Leader

What happens when you’re asked to step-up and lead the work of the design team or to manage your fellow designers for the first time? Most of us envision ourselves sketching ideas, designing solutions, or prototyping our days away, forever in our happy place. And we’re no different–we had no idea what to expect, beyond knowing what we saw that we thought was good or… not so good. We became new design managers and had to learn how to navigate our new responsibilities–to our boss and to our former peers–while trying to lead others to be successful as designers.

We faced a lot of challenges, and learned a lot about ourselves, our teams, and our boss. We’re going to share some tools and techniques that have helped us become better at leading our teams, and delivering to those who count on all of us. And we’re still working on becoming the best bosses in the world.

Dr. Steve Julius

Dr. Steve Julius is the founder and chief executive of HRCG, a Chicago based firm specializing in executive leadership, high performance teamwork, organizational effectiveness and strategic human capital solutions. A true proponent of the power that is derived from integrating diverse talents and points-of-view, Steve has built a team of professionals who combine the approach of trusted advisor with the first-hand knowledge and insight that comes from their having been in significant leadership positions prior to joining HRCG.

Steve believes that personal and professional success is the result of principled intention, consistent practice and skillful execution. As such, he maintains an active practice of advising senior executives and their teams from an array of major corporations, entrepreneurial companies and professional service organizations. He also serves on the advisory board for several private equity firms. Whether called upon during times of organizational transition or in anticipation of capitalizing on opportunities for enhanced business performance, Dr. Julius is known for his ability to combine his knowledge of human behavior, organizational dynamics and business strategy to create relevant and practical solutions. Steve’s enthusiastic, outcome oriented style has been described as “contagious” resulting not only in ready-to-use business solutions, but also a collective sense of personal satisfaction and empowerment on the part of those with whom Steve works.

Getting a Seat at the Table and Keeping It!

Design is now finding it has a seat at the leadership table, but is it/are you viewed as a practitioner of an arcane science that is called upon to facilitate business processes? Or, are you also routinely called upon to contribute to the overall business strategy at the company–wide or departmental level? Building strong, domain capability will maintain your status as a design expert, but it won’t lead to your being trusted as someone who can help build the overall business strategy. That requires a complementary set of skills.

Talk to any CEO in organizations small and large and she will tell you about the critical role technology—and design–play in that business’ success. Ask that same CEO to describe how the design functions contribute to the day-to-day operation and it’s likely she will describe an enabling or support role. Dr. Steve Julius will describe how you can contribute to significant value creation as a strategic business partner, while maintaining and even enhancing your status as a design expert.

Lightning

Julia Keren-Detar

UX Designer, Untame

Julia Keren-Detar is a game designer and developer based out of Chicago, IL. Currently she is the Creative Director for Untame, a studio shared by her and her husband. She is working on Mushroom 11 with Itay Keren, Simon and Kara Kono, contributing to the game design, UX and marketing. She’s worked on several casual and indie titles including Untame’s award-winning mobile game “Rope Rescue” and Arkadium’s hit Facebook game “Mahjongg Dimensions Blast”. At Arkadium, she was a senior developer at the R&D department, prototyping and designing dozens of games. Julia is also an avid quilter and a hobby game historian.

Usability Testing & Development on a Shoestring Budget

As an indie game studio, we had a shoestring budget for developing Mushroom 11, an award winning video game on desktop and mobile. This talk will explain how we used prototyping to make fast iterations on our design and how we used trade shows and other marketing events as ways to collect user data which informed our design process throughout development.

Kathi Kaiser

Co-Founder & Partner, Centralis

Kathi Kaiser is co-founder and partner at Centralis, a Chicago-based UX consultancy. She leads a top-notch team in creating great user experiences for global clients, start-ups, and cultural institutions. When Kathi’s not at the whiteboard or in the lab, she may be found observing users on boats, in museums, at train stations, and anywhere else where the digital and physical worlds collide. Kathi is a frequent speaker on topics in UX, and has served as an adjunct faculty member at the Illinois Institute of Technology’s Institute of Design.

How to Design a Company

Back in 2001, I quit a perfectly good job and founded a UX consulting firm in a garage (a cliché, I know, but it’s true). Sixteen years later, Centralis is a thriving research and design firm with a small but mighty staff of UXers dedicated to both our craft and the company. Along the way we’ve learned that designing a company isn’t so different from designing a product. In this talk, I’ll share some of the lessons we’ve learned through prototyping, gathering feedback, and iterating on our organization.

Nicole Maynard

Head of User Experience, Hyatt

Nicole Maynard is the Head of User Experience at Hyatt leading a team of researchers, interaction and visual designers, creating solutions that elevate Hyatt’s digital footprint and enhance the guest experience. She has taken the helm as president of the Chicago chapter of UXPA (User Experience Professionals Association).

Nicole is a versatile UX professional; she has a foundation in graphic, information and interaction design and has been performing user research well before realizing it was a profession. She has always found the inner workings of our minds to be a compelling subject of study. Her work has been published nationally and has won various design awards. If you want to get her chatting, ask about her talking budgie or her commitment to health and wellness.

Cultivating Happiness

Neuroscience explains the delicate sparks that can either create happiness or make it elusive. Happiness has power–it makes us more productive, engaged and creative. When we’re feeling good, we are better able to create delightful experiences and have that positivity trickle into everything we touch. Let’s take a look at methods for cultivating happiness within ourselves so we can propagate it for others.

Suzanna Bierwirth

Chief Creative Officer, The Mars Agency

Raised and educated as a visual artist in Germany, I am relentless in my pursuit to make work that is meaningful, memorable and beautiful. I am left and right brained, and continually deploy both art and science, to create programs that engage consumers, change minds and evoke behavior. I believe there has never been a more exciting time to be in marketing. I love that we have to move faster and be more intuitive and inventive than ever before. And with the lines now blurred between all disciplines and channels, I know anything and everything is possible.

Managing Up, Down & Sideways

Congrats–you finally got promoted! You’ve gotten your seat at the table and now you’re learning that it’s no longer just about the work. It’s also about the politics within your own organization and the clients. These tips are what I have learned over the years–from Junior Art Director to Chief Creative Officer–and none of them involve kissing ass or sucking up. It’s all about empathy.

Location Details

Columbia College Film Row

We are big fans of our venue and sponsor: Columbia College in Chicago. Columbia is a great place to learn and upgrade your design skills and we’re excited to host our inaugural Prototypes, Process & Play with them!

About Columbia College

Columbia College Chicago is an institution of higher education specializing in arts and media disciplines, with nearly 12,000 students pursuing degrees within 120 undergraduate and graduate programs.

Where to Park?

Coming from out of town? We’ve set up a special rate for attendees at The Congress Plaza Hotel on Michigan Avenue in the heart of Chicago.

Sponsorship Opportunities

We want to be the easiest partner you’ve ever worked with–even at the traditional conference level! With that as our guiding mantra, all of our Prototypes, Process & Play sponsorships are $1,500.

Prototypes, Process & Play has many different options available that are comparable to any other large scale event, and we’re happy to work with you to create something custom to meet your needs. We’ve got a great event planned and we’d love to talk to you about how we can partner with you!

The Short Version

Be respectful of other people; respectfully ask people to stop if you are bothered; and if you can’t resolve an issue contact the organizers. If you are being a problem, it will be apparent and you’ll be asked to leave.